Last month, we celebrated 20 years of starting, sustaining and growing Newleaf Training and Development. My wife and I moved here in 2006 with two very young children — 5,285 miles from our roots in central England. We both resigned from well-paid, secure jobs that provided a regular paycheck, despite never having run a business before.
Here are 20 lessons we’ve learned about people at work over the past 20 years. Whether you are an employee or an entrepreneur, I’m sure many of these will resonate with you.
- Leadership is everything — without men and women of high character and high competence, organizations will be mediocre at best.
- Employees choose how much to give of themselves based on how much they trust their leadership.
- Trust is the currency that exists between people.
- All organizations are the same on the inside, regardless of whether they are manufacturers, retailers, or service businesses — they utilize human resources to produce revenue, cash flow and profit by providing value to their customers.
- All organizations must ensure income > expenses and assets > liabilities.
- The best way to retain talent is to be successful and have great leaders.
- Principles endure — successful people at work align their perceptions and behaviors with timeless, universal and objective principles such as the Golden Rule. Unsuccessful people break themselves against such principles.
- Change is the only constant.
- Great organizations are people-centered.
- Leaders must lead by example — if their example is not worth following, people won’t truly follow them; they’ll simply comply while looking for another job.
- Training must have a purpose — it shouldn’t be used just to “rally the troops” or “use up the budget.”
- Training must be endorsed by senior leadership — if they don’t see the point, neither will the participants.
- Great organizations build a culture of stewardship, encouraging and rewarding employees to treat the organization’s resources as if they were their own.
- Don’t be impressed by someone’s busyness. Highly effective people don’t use language such as “busy,” “slammed,” or “buried.” They take no pride in frenetic, worthless motion; rather, they work with prioritized purpose.
- Mission statements and vision statements are not the same thing. The former defines why the organization exists; the latter defines where you want to go and by when. Both should be crisp, clear, audacious and memorable. The mission doesn’t change. The vision should be reset every one to three years.
The last five speak to business owners or would-be entrepreneurs:
- Treat your employees the way you want them to treat your customers.
- Share financials with your employees and ask for their input on results — once people care, there’s no stopping them.
- Woody Allen said, “Ninety percent of success is showing up.” We have won so much client work simply because we did what we said we would do. Oh — and I think the other 10% is showing up on time.
- There are two types of business owners: the entrepreneur and the self-employed person. The latter path is exhausting because as demand for the business increases, so does the demand on your time. In contrast, an entrepreneur should find themselves working less and less in the business as it grows.
- Business is no more complicated than people working with people called employees and vendors to serve people called customers. Money is simply the fruit that falls from the tree when this is done well. We’re all in the people business.
In closing, we are grateful to the United States for welcoming us with open arms. It has been hard work — but good work. We’ve managed to pay the bills and put our kids through college while creating jobs and opportunities for our vendor partners. Most importantly, I’d like to think we’ve made a significant and sustainable difference for 327 clients across nine countries and 31 states.
Paul Butler is a Santa Clarita resident and a client partner with Newleaf Training and Development of Valencia (newleaftd.com). For questions or comments, email Butler at [email protected].
